Saturday, June 26, 2010

Gantt charts have a really bad reputation these days. They're strongly associated with the waterfall methodology, are considered an evil tool that managers use to micro-manage teams, and are usually classified as outdated delusions of certainty about projects that are subject to lots of change.

But still, I love Gantt charts! They're a great way to keep everybody in synch with the overall timeline of a project, team allocation, and how the project dates relate to other important dates.

My secret to make Gantt charts successful is easy: Keep It Simple!

Here are a few tips on how to achieve Gantt Nirvana:

You have to be able to produce the Gantt really quickly. The problem with most Gantt charts is that creating them is a project in itself. And that means that by the time you publish them, they're already out-of-date.

It must be really easy to change the Gantt. The Gantt's main purpose is communication. So when the project changes, the Gantt must also change.

Gantt's don't work well with lots of data. Forget about the never-ending WBSs. It's too much detail and too much work. User stories are more than enough detail.

Assign to teams, not individuals. It's up to the team to organize how they solve problems. Besides, it means a lot less work for you!

Gantt's don't scale well vertically. Don't make a stair case of user stories if they all belong to the same project. Show them one after the other, with the most important first, of course!

Be precise. There's not much point communicating something that's wrong. Take into account the team velocity, vacations, national holidays, ...

Add milestones and releases. Make it obvious when things will be made available. Just because a user story is completed next week, that doesn't mean it will be available in production.

Worry about the future. Retrospectives are important learning tools, but usually it's more important to communicate were we are heading. Focus on that.

At OutSystems, we used our own Agile Platform to automate the entire process of creating the Gantt. All I have to do is click a button, and hey presto! Here's how they look: